I still play it regularly (about every 6 months or so), and I still like it way better than Civ IV or Civ V. The latest Civilizations have more bells and whistles and streamline things a bit better. They also aren't as reliant on base explosion (build as many bases as you can, chop chop! Efficiency be damned!) as SMAC. But you also can't melt the polar ice caps to sink all of your opponents' cities underwater. Nor do they have great little secret project movies whenever you earn a new secret project. If someone could bring the terraforming and unit creation/mod options to Civilization, I think I'd like it better, but until then...
Does the faction make a difference outside of which personality everyone thinks you are? Like, does the University get enhanced tech gain or something?
I expected this to be the case, but since it seems to be possible to make your own faction (kinda sorta) it might not be how this actually works.
every faction has pluses and minuses. you should be able to see them right at faction select
This game was awesome and I played it for untold hours when it came out and even sporadically until this day. Indeed, the last time I played it was a few days ago. It's better than any of the Civilization games. But there are a lot of crippling problems.
The AI is just really primitive and this is a huge problem. I mean, it's essentially a single player game. And when the AI doesn't have a clue as to conducting overseas warfare, it really takes away from the game. Just find an island to build on and you're safe.
Of course, then you have to deal with the really annoying terraforming that the AI does to connect land masses. That's one of my biggest gripes with the game. I usually rage quit when the AI connects their land mass to mine. It's a ridiculous concept and it blows from a gameplay perspective too.
The AI also does a much better job with certain factions. Or perhaps put another way, certain factions are much better.
I've set the game to all AI control many times to observe how games play out. And the militaristic factions always dominate. So the Hive, Spartans, Believers, and Cult will build as many cities as possible and then take over their slow-building neighbours and repeat until the end game.
Doesn't matter what kind of map you play on. Tiny maps, huge maps, big continents, small continents, the four factions I mention will very often win the game.
There are other factions who will sometimes eek out a victory. Again, just through building a lot of cities and then taking over their neighbours, though. The Gains, Peacekeepers and Free Drones are basically the only other contenders. The rest of the factions simply refuse to build new cities. So they get destroyed in every single game.
I mean, I understand that having non-military victories is possible and that's what these other factions are going for. But it's just not practical. The strategy of building as many cities as possible and then taking over your neighbour's cities is clearly the most successful strategy as evidenced by the hundreds of AI-controlled games that I've watched.
Then there are the Pirates. These guys should be unstoppable juggernauts. And indeed, whenever you play as them, as long as you keep building new bases, you win the game. You have the whole ocean to yourself for quite a while and if anybody builds a sea base, you can quickly take it. The ability to capture ships is also a big, overpowered ability.
But the AI Pirates are morons. They'll build a few cities and then stop for some reason. It might be because of "inefficiency" but "inefficiency" is a total joke. Just turn your citizens to "entertainers" or whatever and keep cranking out more cities. Loads of small cities are vastly better than a few big cities.
Also, sea bases are just annoying and not fun. They'll take away land cities' resources, for example. The zones of control in this game are not good. I'd like to see something more like a Civilization 4 zone of control thing. Also, it's compulsory to have a navy because that's the only way to capture these sea bases. I mean, that's obvious but I would have liked to have sea bases removed from the game.
The Cloning Vats. Whoever builds this, wins the game. I guess it's fine to have a big, overpowered secret project. And being able to crank out clones should be a big game changer. But the AI should be set to all aggressively attack whoever builds the Cloning Vats. Because as it is, whoever builds the Cloning Vats just steamrolls over all the remaining passive factions. Whatever city builds the Cloning Vats should be in immediate and real danger of being nuked by every faction and every faction should declare permanent war on the new clone faction.
Those two alien factions in Alien Crossfire are also dominant. Again, just because they build a lot of bases. And it's not fun to have them in the game because then you're down to five factions for the UN or whatever that thing is. Being able to have all 14 factions in the game would be sweet.
Anyway, it's an okay game but I can't recommend it in today's market. The AI is a joke and there are too many problems with the factions and balance, et cetera. They've surely made loads of better turn-based strategy games in the past 12 years. Don't bother with any of the Civilization games, though. After Civilization II, it's all downhill. And Civilization 5 is mind-bogglingly bad.
Of course, then you have to deal with the really annoying terraforming that the AI does to connect land masses. That's one of my biggest gripes with the game. I usually rage quit when the AI connects their land mass to mine. It's a ridiculous concept and it blows from a gameplay perspective too.
This is an integral part of the game, dude. Looks like the AI actually figured out how to "win" against you, if you rage quit over something tiny like that. I often use terraforming to build land bridges or to sink land to stop incoming forces. Terraformers are the field engineers of this game. You talk about how "oh, the AI sucks as long as you build on an island by yourself, yadda yadda", but you complain about the one tactic that allows the AI to attack you?
Then there are the Pirates. These guys should be unstoppable juggernauts. And indeed, whenever you play as them, as long as you keep building new bases, you win the game. You have the whole ocean to yourself for quite a while and if anybody builds a sea base, you can quickly take it. The ability to capture ships is also a big, overpowered ability.
But the AI Pirates are morons. They'll build a few cities and then stop for some reason. It might be because of "inefficiency" but "inefficiency" is a total joke. Just turn your citizens to "entertainers" or whatever and keep cranking out more cities. Loads of small cities are vastly better than a few big cities.
Yes, but it probably was for more of a "flavor" reason. The AI wasn't built to crush you or dominate you. The Pirates were made to be a small faction of outlying ocean bandits. There was a concerted effort to make factions that really had personality. Thus, you'll see Gaians that are concerned with overpopulation and distance their cities from each other, and the Hive building cities pretty much everywhere and control zones be damned.
The Cloning Vats. Whoever builds this, wins the game. I guess it's fine to have a big, overpowered secret project. And being able to crank out clones should be a big game changer. But the AI should be set to all aggressively attack whoever builds the Cloning Vats.
This is a quick road to Drone Riots on any higher difficulty level. Yes, it's a huge advantage, but so is the Planetary Transit System, and that has the main advantage of not immediately putting your drone population to strained levels. It's a stepping stone to an easy victory for everything except Economic victory, but it's so late in the game that it won't turn you around if you are losing in the mid-game (when you can't even complete a secret project if you are being steamrolled). It's definitely an end-game secret project. It has the absolute best "secret project" video, though.
The main initial values of the game are text files. You can manually edit some of them to make certain factions more aggressive. For example, increasing the efficiency value (the number of bases before efficiency tanks) will make factions other than Yang build more bases. I often adjust the Mag Road values to something other than zero movement cost, to avoid the endgame "infinite auto-patrol" bug, although this was mostly fixed with subsequent patches.
Drones aren't really a huge problem in this game though, once you get supply crawlers you can stop mineral production in base squares and just put them on everything. If you have the borehole cluster near you thats an instant 20+ minerals or energy per turn until you can build them yourself. If you're the Gaians you don't even have to worry about pollution.
Drones aren't really a huge problem in this game though, once you get supply crawlers you can stop mineral production in base squares and just put them on everything. If you have the borehole cluster near you thats an instant 20+ minerals or energy per turn until you can build them yourself. If you're the Gaians you don't even have to worry about pollution.
The problem with Cloning Vats is that it makes the small population cities that have been languishing on low nutrient resources suddenly blossom into a metropolis, often without the required underlying infrastructure to prevent the Drone Riots at higher difficulties. When you have a Drone Riot under those circumstances, it's a problem that can persist for a while (Drone Riots kill resource gathering). At lower difficulties, Drone Riots happen so infrequently that you know you've done something wrong with your base building or managing your city jobs.
Still, you can just nerve staple them. At that point in the game (Cloning Vats), you've either already won, or on your way to winning.
Hahnsoo1 on
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited June 2011
Man, my best friend back in my hometown -loved- this game, and was extremely excited to find it on GoG. Alien Crossfire needs to come out, though. Personally, I have a hard time getting into Civ-type games, but this was always the one I wanted.
Athenor on
He/Him | "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." - Dr. Johnetta Cole, 7/22/2024
cloning vats is kind of annoying until you get the telepathic matrix. being able to run power with no penalty is decent. weather paradigm and empath guild are the two most overpowered secret projects. look at how much time you spend terraforming over the course of the game and cut that in half.
What did everyone think about the orbital platforms? I found them very useful when building up well functioning cities peacefully and always focused on getting the techs for them as my top priority for the mid game.
I liked how part of the storyline-commentary only came about as audio when you completed the first of a type of base improvement. It gave a feeling of progress and accomplishment while immersing you in the world.
The AI was fairly a joke, but considering the number of options available and the next closest civ was civ 2 to compare it, it did fairly well. I found if there were no land enemy's to attack, the AI knew where you were, and they had control of the ocean in between, they could launch coastal attacks. They were not very effective though.
Void Slayer on
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Just played through my first Transcendence game and damn, that was fun. Thoroughly enjoying this game still though I must admit I am very much obsessed with the Gaian faction. Next project will be to corner the global energy market!
My biggest issue with the game is the snowballing effects that tend to occur. Every game I have played so far has had Miriam wiping out at least 2 factions and claiming about 80% of the territory outside of my domain, and even on normal map size I'll usually gain enough momentum with my colonization that the game quickly turns into a crawl as I obsessively micromanage my 50 sprawling cities.
Does anyone have good advice on how to play a slower kind of game? It would be awesome to play a round where there is actually a semblance of balance of power between the different powers. Adding water is the obvious way of making the factions survive, but that takes a lot of the challenge of playing a building heavy game which I can never resist. Also, what is a good terraforming early game strat for non-gaian factions? Most of the improvements seem pretty crap at low tech levels since forests seem to trump pretty much everything until the caps are removed.
Forests are always pretty boss for early developement. Toss them on any square thats not rainy and rolling and build farms mines on anything else. If you get industrial automation early you won't even need the population, you can just toss zero-upkeep resource crawlers into every forest square thats not being worked for 2 minerals to your base. Build farms on nutrient squares outside your base range too and use crawlers.
Once you get the humidifier or whatever its called farms will become useful again as you can increase any square to rainy and the +1 nutrient farm upgrade helps too.
Heavy terraforming also incurs a large penalty to eco-damage though, but you can mitigate that somewhat with green economy, controlling the manifold (if you have SMACX) and hybrid forests. Forest squares incur almost zero eco damage though so they're definately the way to go early on, not sure if that also counts for when crawlers work them though, I believe bases carry the max eco damage for minerals brought through them.
Well the first thing to do is to find Miriam and kill her.
After that everything is gravy.
Honestly I just replace Miriam with a SMACX faction, I never liked them much but I can usually live with Aki-Zeta 5. She's cute and usually keeps to herself.
I must say I have not quite figured out the ways improvements "stack" yet. There seem to be some quirks with the resource limitations at the start too, from what I understand all resources should be limited to 3 but a farm on rainy gives 2 nutrients instead of 3 and a borehole gives 2 minerals and 3 energy while mines with roads can give 3 minerals. I guess some of that is tied to tech advances that I don't have to bother with when I play the Gaians.
Edit: I am also still not sure if talents have any effect other than canceling out angry drones.
I must say I have not quite figured out the ways improvements "stack" yet. There seem to be some quirks with the resource limitations at the start too, from what I understand all resources should be limited to 3 but a farm on rainy gives 2 nutrients instead of 3 and a borehole gives 2 minerals and 3 energy while mines with roads can give 3 minerals. I guess some of that is tied to tech advances that I don't have to bother with when I play the Gaians.
Edit: I am also still not sure if talents have any effect other than canceling out angry drones.
Boreholes give 7 energy AND minerals if worked by a base. But early on you can't get more than 2 of anything out of most squares because of tech limitations unless the square has a bonus resource on it.
Generally you'll want to go directly for any of 2 technologies. Centauri Empathy or Inudstrial Automation. Empathy gives you the empath guild, which gives you double votes and lets you become planetary governor early on. And automation gives you the crawlers which are just free minerals everywhere.
I never really play around with psych much myself, but I've never played a game beyond Talent so I haven't really been challenged much either. But I think golden ages (equal talents and workers, no drones) makes a base bypass the tech limit for resource gathering.
I play on transcend where drones start appearing as soon as a base hits 2 population so psyche can be very useful if you can't use police(ie running free market). it can also be used to trigger golden ages which is one way to population boom.
Jars on
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Actually I take that back, it's just a good idea to kill her no matter who you play.
Yeah, my early game check list is like this;
1)Find and eliminate The Believers.
2)Develop Air Units.
3) Find and eliminate The Hive.
I do play Spartans most of the time though, so my start is pretty military. Once I get some tech down and get those two factions out of the way, then I can start acting more civilized. At least until I buddy up with Deirdre and get Morgan all huffy.
I play on transcend where drones start appearing as soon as a base hits 2 population so psyche can be very useful if you can't use police(ie running free market). it can also be used to trigger golden ages which is one way to population boom.
I wanna try this, what should I be focusing on early on if I want to survive on Transcend?
it depends on factions but if you are the gaians your mindworms will keep you safe while you get crawlers. the standard build 500 bases and crawl in a ton of minerals works just fine on transcend. use population booms to grow your bases rapidly and create lots of specialists.
the easiest way to win on any difficulty is play the spartans on a tiny map and impact rover rush everyone.
Well the first thing to do is to find Miriam and kill her.
After that everything is gravy.
Honestly I just replace Miriam with a SMACX faction, I never liked them much but I can usually live with Aki-Zeta 5. She's cute and usually keeps to herself.
But...you don't get that warm, fuzzy feeling of crushing her in a military conflict?
Are there any nice graphic mods for this? I mean, I can play it vanilla. It's still one of my favorite games of all time. I just think it could look a bit prettier.
Does the expansion have updated graphics? Might be something for me to look forward too.
What do you guys think about Clean Reactors? With certain factions, obviously those builders with weak support, I go for them pretty fast and enjoy to spit out as many units as I want. But since that makes units pretty expensive I'm not sure this is the best strategy. I've never played better than Librarian, so I may easily be wrong...
By the way, the unit designer pisses me off as well. My life was saved by discovering the "Design Units automatically" in the Options Menu. I'll never turn THAT on again...
Why would you do that? Certainly doesn't give you any advantage, and it doesn't seem like a whole lot of fun to me...
Philskow on
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited July 2011
Installed this bitch and played it for the first time in many years and a few turns later oh shit where's the time
I was going for a peaceful, tech (transcendence) victory, because I don't really do that enough in 4x games in lieu of conquests, because that's the most straightforward, neanderthal way. But damn punkasses won't leave me alone, shit. First Yang starts thinking he's hard, literally four turns in, then Miriam goes holier than thou, and then Yang wants to tango again because I apparently didn't do a good enough job of whupping his ass earlier. Then, after destroying my enemies, big bully Santiago decides she wants to be a total bitch. So some Planetbusters later, she finally starts understanding that goddamn leave me alone.
And so, with 95% of the inhabitable landmass belonging to me, amongst the smoldering craters and ruins, I voted myself as the supreme ruler. Diplomatic victory, for I am kind and loving man.
Why would you do that? Certainly doesn't give you any advantage, and it doesn't seem like a whole lot of fun to me...
It effects everybody and is pretty clearly the way the game was intended to be played. The whole "Secrets of the Human Brain" thing doesn't make any sense otherwise.
That is unfortunate. I was wondering what happened with it.
I was trying to use the scenario builder to make a good, huge planet scenario for offline, but for some reason, no matter what I do it wants to start up as a multiplayer game, with those additional messages.
Re: Clean reactors. I always saw them as an option if you didn't have support, but not the first option for units because of their cost. Of course, I usually played University so my job was to placate everybody until I had superior weapons tech, so I was usually doing fighting out of large colonies near other factions.
And Locusts of Chiron are THE air unit to have. Everything else is just holding air superiority until you can get those sumbitches out.
I wrote this for a gaming website a bunch of years ago. Thought I'd just leave this here for you:
What I’ve Learned About Politics And War From Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri:
- Peace Is Best Kept Through Superior Firepower.
- Religious Fundies won’t stop until you beat them into the ground with their own book of scripture.
- Don’t give technology to anybody but your closest allies, and don’t even give THEM your best stuff. (You need fusion reactors? Ooooo. Sorry. Ran outta those last week.)
- Environmentalists will be the first to initiate a scorched earth campaign if you piss them off. (Boreholes?! The Greenies have BOREHOLES?!)
- Try to limit the number of factions you’re at war with at any one time to less than half the game’s total.
- Don’t sweat it if this isn’t possible. Half of them will be fighting with whipped cream pies anyway (see also: Morgan Industries)
- Militia members usually don’t have the first idea of how to actually fight.
- There’s no better feeling than to have communists surrender to you.
- Do NOT f*ck with the University unless you have overwhelming force in position to annihilate them, or you have plenty of probe teams.
- Repairing is cheaper than replacing.
- Punishment Spheres have real S&M appeal.
- Once you’ve saved their asses, just expect your “allies” to try and take you out.
- When given the choice between money and technology, take the tech.
- Try to barter all extortion tried against you down to half before just giving up and declaring war.
- Planet Busters are a pain to make, a pain to use, and will get all of your Pacts revoked for you, so only use them if you have no other choice or you really really want to.
- Diplomatic victory is for pussies.
- Having superior military tech means less money spent on building war materiel in the long run.
- Endear yourself to the natives as much as reasonable. That way, they’re more likely to pester your enemies than you.
- If you have to wage war on multiple fronts, skirmish on all but your easiest front. That way you can more quickly finish off your weakest enemies, while still being an economic drain on your other ones.
You were younger back then, so mistakes were easier to make.
There's no better feeling than having the Christians surrender to you.
I stand by my original statement.
Besides, theologically, surrendering is what Christians are supposed to do. I had no problems beating down Miriam, because she was obviously theologically deficient. She was, in fact, a heretic herself.
You were younger back then, so mistakes were easier to make.
There's no better feeling than having the Christians surrender to you.
I stand by my original statement.
Besides, theologically, surrendering is what Christians are supposed to do. I had no problems beating down Miriam, because she was obviously theologically deficient. She was, in fact, a heretic herself.
I can see your point, but given the uncomparable aggression of the Believers versus the Hive (the Hive even fall behind the Spartans), the Christians surrendering is far more enjoyable. I couldn't care less how the Christians feel about it, it's results I'm after.
Really, there's no better feeling than having the Christians surrender to you, the nonbeliever. Gun-nuts come next, but that's just because they're supposed to be the masters of warfare. Then communists, a distant third.
EDIT: Though I say this primarily as a University, and next, a Peacekeeper player. No wonder the Believers go after me every time.
I can see your point, but given the uncomparable aggression of the Believers versus the Hive (the Hive even fall behind the Spartans), the Christians surrendering is far more enjoyable. I couldn't care less how the Christians feel about it, it's results I'm after.
Really, there's no better feeling than having the Christians surrender to you, the nonbeliever. Gun-nuts come next, but that's just because they're supposed to be the masters of warfare. Then communists, a distant third.
Don't bring me into your bold text blasphemy.
See, I always had problems with the Hive. The Believers sucked too, but I was usually able to keep the Spartans in line just by virtue of having something stronger than peashooters at hand.
Personally, I was far more appalled at the thought of a police state and planned economy, and Yang always seemed to be such a smug little s#!t. I relish in his surrenders, and that's when I'm feeling gracious and let him.
Getting rid of Miriam is always a relief, don't get me wrong. I imagine recreating the Ezekiel recitation from Pulp Fiction with her in the Punishment Sphere.
Posts
every faction has pluses and minuses. you should be able to see them right at faction select
The AI is just really primitive and this is a huge problem. I mean, it's essentially a single player game. And when the AI doesn't have a clue as to conducting overseas warfare, it really takes away from the game. Just find an island to build on and you're safe.
Of course, then you have to deal with the really annoying terraforming that the AI does to connect land masses. That's one of my biggest gripes with the game. I usually rage quit when the AI connects their land mass to mine. It's a ridiculous concept and it blows from a gameplay perspective too.
The AI also does a much better job with certain factions. Or perhaps put another way, certain factions are much better.
I've set the game to all AI control many times to observe how games play out. And the militaristic factions always dominate. So the Hive, Spartans, Believers, and Cult will build as many cities as possible and then take over their slow-building neighbours and repeat until the end game.
Doesn't matter what kind of map you play on. Tiny maps, huge maps, big continents, small continents, the four factions I mention will very often win the game.
There are other factions who will sometimes eek out a victory. Again, just through building a lot of cities and then taking over their neighbours, though. The Gains, Peacekeepers and Free Drones are basically the only other contenders. The rest of the factions simply refuse to build new cities. So they get destroyed in every single game.
I mean, I understand that having non-military victories is possible and that's what these other factions are going for. But it's just not practical. The strategy of building as many cities as possible and then taking over your neighbour's cities is clearly the most successful strategy as evidenced by the hundreds of AI-controlled games that I've watched.
Then there are the Pirates. These guys should be unstoppable juggernauts. And indeed, whenever you play as them, as long as you keep building new bases, you win the game. You have the whole ocean to yourself for quite a while and if anybody builds a sea base, you can quickly take it. The ability to capture ships is also a big, overpowered ability.
But the AI Pirates are morons. They'll build a few cities and then stop for some reason. It might be because of "inefficiency" but "inefficiency" is a total joke. Just turn your citizens to "entertainers" or whatever and keep cranking out more cities. Loads of small cities are vastly better than a few big cities.
Also, sea bases are just annoying and not fun. They'll take away land cities' resources, for example. The zones of control in this game are not good. I'd like to see something more like a Civilization 4 zone of control thing. Also, it's compulsory to have a navy because that's the only way to capture these sea bases. I mean, that's obvious but I would have liked to have sea bases removed from the game.
The Cloning Vats. Whoever builds this, wins the game. I guess it's fine to have a big, overpowered secret project. And being able to crank out clones should be a big game changer. But the AI should be set to all aggressively attack whoever builds the Cloning Vats. Because as it is, whoever builds the Cloning Vats just steamrolls over all the remaining passive factions. Whatever city builds the Cloning Vats should be in immediate and real danger of being nuked by every faction and every faction should declare permanent war on the new clone faction.
Those two alien factions in Alien Crossfire are also dominant. Again, just because they build a lot of bases. And it's not fun to have them in the game because then you're down to five factions for the UN or whatever that thing is. Being able to have all 14 factions in the game would be sweet.
Anyway, it's an okay game but I can't recommend it in today's market. The AI is a joke and there are too many problems with the factions and balance, et cetera. They've surely made loads of better turn-based strategy games in the past 12 years. Don't bother with any of the Civilization games, though. After Civilization II, it's all downhill. And Civilization 5 is mind-bogglingly bad.
Yes, but it probably was for more of a "flavor" reason. The AI wasn't built to crush you or dominate you. The Pirates were made to be a small faction of outlying ocean bandits. There was a concerted effort to make factions that really had personality. Thus, you'll see Gaians that are concerned with overpopulation and distance their cities from each other, and the Hive building cities pretty much everywhere and control zones be damned.
This is a quick road to Drone Riots on any higher difficulty level. Yes, it's a huge advantage, but so is the Planetary Transit System, and that has the main advantage of not immediately putting your drone population to strained levels. It's a stepping stone to an easy victory for everything except Economic victory, but it's so late in the game that it won't turn you around if you are losing in the mid-game (when you can't even complete a secret project if you are being steamrolled). It's definitely an end-game secret project. It has the absolute best "secret project" video, though.
The main initial values of the game are text files. You can manually edit some of them to make certain factions more aggressive. For example, increasing the efficiency value (the number of bases before efficiency tanks) will make factions other than Yang build more bases. I often adjust the Mag Road values to something other than zero movement cost, to avoid the endgame "infinite auto-patrol" bug, although this was mostly fixed with subsequent patches.
Still, you can just nerve staple them. At that point in the game (Cloning Vats), you've either already won, or on your way to winning.
I liked how part of the storyline-commentary only came about as audio when you completed the first of a type of base improvement. It gave a feeling of progress and accomplishment while immersing you in the world.
The AI was fairly a joke, but considering the number of options available and the next closest civ was civ 2 to compare it, it did fairly well. I found if there were no land enemy's to attack, the AI knew where you were, and they had control of the ocean in between, they could launch coastal attacks. They were not very effective though.
My biggest issue with the game is the snowballing effects that tend to occur. Every game I have played so far has had Miriam wiping out at least 2 factions and claiming about 80% of the territory outside of my domain, and even on normal map size I'll usually gain enough momentum with my colonization that the game quickly turns into a crawl as I obsessively micromanage my 50 sprawling cities.
Does anyone have good advice on how to play a slower kind of game? It would be awesome to play a round where there is actually a semblance of balance of power between the different powers. Adding water is the obvious way of making the factions survive, but that takes a lot of the challenge of playing a building heavy game which I can never resist. Also, what is a good terraforming early game strat for non-gaian factions? Most of the improvements seem pretty crap at low tech levels since forests seem to trump pretty much everything until the caps are removed.
Once you get the humidifier or whatever its called farms will become useful again as you can increase any square to rainy and the +1 nutrient farm upgrade helps too.
Heavy terraforming also incurs a large penalty to eco-damage though, but you can mitigate that somewhat with green economy, controlling the manifold (if you have SMACX) and hybrid forests. Forest squares incur almost zero eco damage though so they're definately the way to go early on, not sure if that also counts for when crawlers work them though, I believe bases carry the max eco damage for minerals brought through them.
After that everything is gravy.
Honestly I just replace Miriam with a SMACX faction, I never liked them much but I can usually live with Aki-Zeta 5. She's cute and usually keeps to herself.
I must say I have not quite figured out the ways improvements "stack" yet. There seem to be some quirks with the resource limitations at the start too, from what I understand all resources should be limited to 3 but a farm on rainy gives 2 nutrients instead of 3 and a borehole gives 2 minerals and 3 energy while mines with roads can give 3 minerals. I guess some of that is tied to tech advances that I don't have to bother with when I play the Gaians.
Edit: I am also still not sure if talents have any effect other than canceling out angry drones.
Boreholes give 7 energy AND minerals if worked by a base. But early on you can't get more than 2 of anything out of most squares because of tech limitations unless the square has a bonus resource on it.
Generally you'll want to go directly for any of 2 technologies. Centauri Empathy or Inudstrial Automation. Empathy gives you the empath guild, which gives you double votes and lets you become planetary governor early on. And automation gives you the crawlers which are just free minerals everywhere.
I never really play around with psych much myself, but I've never played a game beyond Talent so I haven't really been challenged much either. But I think golden ages (equal talents and workers, no drones) makes a base bypass the tech limit for resource gathering.
Actually I take that back, it's just a good idea to kill her no matter who you play.
Yeah, my early game check list is like this;
1)Find and eliminate The Believers.
2)Develop Air Units.
3) Find and eliminate The Hive.
I do play Spartans most of the time though, so my start is pretty military. Once I get some tech down and get those two factions out of the way, then I can start acting more civilized. At least until I buddy up with Deirdre and get Morgan all huffy.
I wanna try this, what should I be focusing on early on if I want to survive on Transcend?
the easiest way to win on any difficulty is play the spartans on a tiny map and impact rover rush everyone.
PM me for details.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
But...you don't get that warm, fuzzy feeling of crushing her in a military conflict?
Yeah, that still sounded weird.
Does the expansion have updated graphics? Might be something for me to look forward too.
By the way, the unit designer pisses me off as well. My life was saved by discovering the "Design Units automatically" in the Options Menu. I'll never turn THAT on again...
Why would you do that? Certainly doesn't give you any advantage, and it doesn't seem like a whole lot of fun to me...
I was going for a peaceful, tech (transcendence) victory, because I don't really do that enough in 4x games in lieu of conquests, because that's the most straightforward, neanderthal way. But damn punkasses won't leave me alone, shit. First Yang starts thinking he's hard, literally four turns in, then Miriam goes holier than thou, and then Yang wants to tango again because I apparently didn't do a good enough job of whupping his ass earlier. Then, after destroying my enemies, big bully Santiago decides she wants to be a total bitch. So some Planetbusters later, she finally starts understanding that goddamn leave me alone.
And so, with 95% of the inhabitable landmass belonging to me, amongst the smoldering craters and ruins, I voted myself as the supreme ruler. Diplomatic victory, for I am kind and loving man.
This game is still civilization.
It effects everybody and is pretty clearly the way the game was intended to be played. The whole "Secrets of the Human Brain" thing doesn't make any sense otherwise.
I tend to play my SP games on focused research, and the MP ones on blind. It makes them more interesting.
Shame that the MP game I was trying to set-up got cancelled because of the little interest people showed u_u
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
I was trying to use the scenario builder to make a good, huge planet scenario for offline, but for some reason, no matter what I do it wants to start up as a multiplayer game, with those additional messages.
Re: Clean reactors. I always saw them as an option if you didn't have support, but not the first option for units because of their cost. Of course, I usually played University so my job was to placate everybody until I had superior weapons tech, so I was usually doing fighting out of large colonies near other factions.
And Locusts of Chiron are THE air unit to have. Everything else is just holding air superiority until you can get those sumbitches out.
I wrote this for a gaming website a bunch of years ago. Thought I'd just leave this here for you:
- Peace Is Best Kept Through Superior Firepower.
- Religious Fundies won’t stop until you beat them into the ground with their own book of scripture.
- Don’t give technology to anybody but your closest allies, and don’t even give THEM your best stuff. (You need fusion reactors? Ooooo. Sorry. Ran outta those last week.)
- Environmentalists will be the first to initiate a scorched earth campaign if you piss them off. (Boreholes?! The Greenies have BOREHOLES?!)
- Try to limit the number of factions you’re at war with at any one time to less than half the game’s total.
- Don’t sweat it if this isn’t possible. Half of them will be fighting with whipped cream pies anyway (see also: Morgan Industries)
- Militia members usually don’t have the first idea of how to actually fight.
- There’s no better feeling than to have communists surrender to you.
- Do NOT f*ck with the University unless you have overwhelming force in position to annihilate them, or you have plenty of probe teams.
- Repairing is cheaper than replacing.
- Punishment Spheres have real S&M appeal.
- Once you’ve saved their asses, just expect your “allies” to try and take you out.
- When given the choice between money and technology, take the tech.
- Try to barter all extortion tried against you down to half before just giving up and declaring war.
- Planet Busters are a pain to make, a pain to use, and will get all of your Pacts revoked for you, so only use them if you have no other choice or you really really want to.
- Diplomatic victory is for pussies.
- Having superior military tech means less money spent on building war materiel in the long run.
- Endear yourself to the natives as much as reasonable. That way, they’re more likely to pester your enemies than you.
- If you have to wage war on multiple fronts, skirmish on all but your easiest front. That way you can more quickly finish off your weakest enemies, while still being an economic drain on your other ones.
Edited for homonym fail.
There's no better feeling than having the Christians surrender to you.
I stand by my original statement.
Besides, theologically, surrendering is what Christians are supposed to do. I had no problems beating down Miriam, because she was obviously theologically deficient. She was, in fact, a heretic herself.
I can see your point, but given the uncomparable aggression of the Believers versus the Hive (the Hive even fall behind the Spartans), the Christians surrendering is far more enjoyable. I couldn't care less how the Christians feel about it, it's results I'm after.
Really, there's no better feeling than having the Christians surrender to you, the nonbeliever. Gun-nuts come next, but that's just because they're supposed to be the masters of warfare. Then communists, a distant third.
EDIT: Though I say this primarily as a University, and next, a Peacekeeper player. No wonder the Believers go after me every time.
Don't bring me into your bold text blasphemy.
See, I always had problems with the Hive. The Believers sucked too, but I was usually able to keep the Spartans in line just by virtue of having something stronger than peashooters at hand.
Personally, I was far more appalled at the thought of a police state and planned economy, and Yang always seemed to be such a smug little s#!t. I relish in his surrenders, and that's when I'm feeling gracious and let him.
Getting rid of Miriam is always a relief, don't get me wrong. I imagine recreating the Ezekiel recitation from Pulp Fiction with her in the Punishment Sphere.